The Halloween Horror Month: Volume VIII
By Darren Williams
05th January 2010

"I was working in the lab late one night."
- Bobby 'Borris' Picket: "the Monster Mash"

The 1960s

The 60s saw horror reach a new height of popularity. Part of it was down to the fact that horror cinema was offering more sexual thrills than most other kinds of film. The symbolic penetration of vampire's teeth, murderer's knives and the like become even more blatant as Hammer and other studios encouraged bigger cleavage and flimsier clothing on their female leads. But even while gothic horror was still undergoing a revival thanks to Hammer and various productions from companies like AIP and European directors like Mario Bava, horror was also striking out in other directions. The psycho-thriller became popular in the 60s, mainly thanks to two films that would kick off the decade. The relaxed censorship laws meant that gore started to make its way into horror films, with the work of H.G. Lewis being especially memorable in the early part of the decade and a low-budget production in 68 would make one of the biggest impacts on horror cinema in a long time.

The decade begun with two of the greatest horror films ever created, Peeping Tom and Psycho. The films questioned the viewer's relationship with horror and with cinema itself as both of them forced the audience into the position of voyeurs. Psycho is probably Hitchcock's most famous work, so famous that it often feels neglected to me. Mainstream audiences adore it but at times it seems that popularity has led us to forget what a startling film it actually is. The plot, if it really needs to be revisited, focuses on Marion Crane. She's just stolen money from her employer and while on the run decides to spend the night at the Bates Motel. Norman Bates has rightly become a character who has entered cinema mythology, as have so many other aspects of the film. The score is one of the most instantly recognisable ever composed for a film, the shower scene would have a good claim to the most famous film sequence of all time. It was a taboo-breaking, thrilling piece of cinema and it elevated the name Norman Bates to the pantheon of movie monsters. Peeping Tom was the sleazier all-British companion piece to Psycho. Peeping Tom may have taken time to establish a reputation to equal Psycho's, but it's a reputation well earned. This effort from the great Michael Powell initially disgusted the critics. Mark Lewis murders women while recording their deaths. It's fair to say that Peeping Tom's antihero was every bit as troubled as Psycho's. The film is also as brilliant as Psycho, with superb performances from Carl Boehm and Anna Massey in the leads. Hitchcock would follow up Psycho with The Birds, an odd film that manages to be both over and underrated by fans of the genre. Powell's career would go into decline directly as a result of Peeping Tom.

Elsewhere in Britain, Hammer were going from strength to strength. They followed up Dracula with The Brides of Dracula. An odd sequel, it didn't bring back Christopher Lee's Count, but it did bring back Cushing's Van Helsing. The Cush' had to save a young schoolteacher from a castle of vampires. Despite it being a bit of an oddity, it was one of the best of the series with there being something slightly daring about showing vampirism as something that afflicts those who allow themselves to become decadent. Lee wouldn't return until six years later in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and even then it was an oddly limited role. That can be put down to his rather petulant refusal to speak any of the lines written for the character rather than a stylistic choice by director Fisher. Still, it works. The film was better than the original and Lee's performance is superior. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave saw Terence Fisher pass the directorial torch to Freddie Francis and Francis created a darker world than Fisher had managed with the vampire franchise. Cushing didn't return, the vampire hunter role was taken by Rupert Davies. Lee returned though and he gave his last great performance as the Count before the unstoppable slide into mediocrity that defined the character's later years.

As for Hammer's other long-running franchise, despite a dip in fortunes for the Frankenstein series in the mid 60s, the most off-beat, and possibly greatest, of the Frankenstein series came in 67 with Frankenstein Created Woman. This departure from the usual formula sees the disfigured daughter of a hanged man take revenge on the men who mocked her. What could easily have been a an excuse for simple titillation actually becomes something quite magnificent, and Cushing's Baron had never been more sympathetic. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed took things back to a more traditional area, but it was still a superior entry in the series and showed a great return to form after the dreadful Horror and Evil films.

Hammer took on the third of the great Universal monsters with their werewolf tale, The Curse of the Werewolf. It suffered from censorship even in its native Britain, but it was one of the better werewolf films, brutal and poignant with Oliver Reed at his best as the lead. It was certainly far better than their half-hearted take on The Phantom of the Opera. Erik seems to be the most difficult of the classic monsters to get right, it's been over 80 years since Chaney took on the role and nobody else has been able to do it justice.

Hammer were often at their most intriguing when they were producing something a little more off-beat. The Damned certainly fit that description, starting off as a Weymouth biker tale and ending up as a bizarre sci-fi/horror/apocalypse hybrid. Their vampire films took a left turn in 63 with The Kiss of the Vampire. Designed to be the third Dracula film, plans were changed along the way and none of the characters returned. It follows some of the social decadence themes laid down by Brides of Dracula when a honeymooning couple get involved in a vampire cult. In fact the film's ending was that originally intended for Brides but changed at the last minute. It's a bit of an interesting failure really, not able to rank as part of the Dracula series yet not strong enough to stand on its own feet.

Artwork for the Peter Curshing Hammer Horror vehicle "Captain Clegg".

Captain Clegg was one of the more inspired, underrated offerings from Hammer. Loosely adapting the Dr. Syn stories, the film was filled with marsh ghosts and smuggling, becoming a mix between old-fashioned adventure and gothic horror. One of Hammer's strongest entries of the 60s, The Stranglers of Bombay, is the kind of film that doesn't get shown too often these days, usually for accusations of racism. With its exploration of murderous cults, it does show some of the more unpleasant attitudes of the time, but it's a strong film and doesn't descend into racist stereotypes as much as the later Terror of the Tongs or Fu Manchu films do and they seem far more easily available, the Fu Manchu especially.

Never Take Sweets from a Stranger was a bit of a departure for the studio, a cross between melodrama and one of the purest kinds of horror, the fear for children, it was set in Canada and revolved around a paedophile of high community standing. Of similar appeal was the low-budget Don't Talk to Strange Men, another warning of the dangers of strangers with a couple of surprisingly strong performances from child actors. Cash on Demand saw them take on A Christmas Carol, as Peter Cushing's Scrooge like bank manager is visited by an unusual criminal on Christmas Eve. Inspired by Psycho and Peeping Tom, Hammer also started producing psycho-thrillers. Most of them weren't in the same league as their more traditional horrors, but some like Paranoiac and The Psychopath had their share of strong little moments.

Most of Hammer's greatest work of the 60s came in the latter half of the decade. Along with the aforementioned Frankenstein Created Woman, they gave us The Nanny, a Lewton-esque tale where Bette Davis plays a demented child-minder. There was also Plague of the Zombies, my personal favourite Hammer, a terrifying, Marxist tale of zombies in Cornwall that laid the groundwork for Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Filmed on the same sets was the intriguing film, The Reptile. It's not always considered one of the studio's classics, but a snake cult, mysterious deaths and John Laurie as Mad Peter ensure that it's always entertaining. But the two finest films the great studio ever produced were to come a year apart in 67 and 68, Quatermass and the Pit and The Devil Rides Out.

I've already discussed the television version of Quatermass and the Pit in the 50s section, it's quite possibly the most intelligent piece of sci-fi/horror ever created. The Hammer film versions of the Quatermass stories were usually let downs in comparison to the television outings and in some ways this one is as well. I think that's only to be expected, a television series, even a mini-series, has more time to spend on deepening the characters and expanding the scale of the story. A film will always have to rush through some important points. But even with that taken into account, the film is still remarkable. It captures the spirit and tone far more than the earlier films and most importantly it actually has a believable Quatermass in Andrew Keir instead of Donleavy.

The Devil Rides Out was of equal brilliance. Based on the Dennis Wheatley novel, it is a tale of Satanism and friendship. The Duc du Richleau (Christopher Lee) discovers that his friend Simon Aron has become involved with a Satanic cult headed by the sinister Mocata (Charles Gray) and resolves to save his soul. The film's highpoint, where Lee and friends are forced to spend the night inside a protective circle while being subjected to constant black magic attacks from Mocata is possibly the finest sequence Terence Fisher ever filmed. Christopher Lee (playing the good guy for once) equals his later performance in The Wicker Man as a career best and Charles Gray gives a performance of slithering, skin-crawling evil as Mocata.

Hammer seemed to dominate British horror throughout the 60s, but the decade saw the birth of their great rival studio, Amicus. They didn't churn out the classics, but they did kick-start their most famous type of film - the anthology horror. They started with Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, which saw Peter Cushing as Dr. Schreck boarding a train carriage and telling the future of those gathered there using his House of Horrors (tarot cards) Some of the stories (A tale of Scottish werewolves, Christopher Lee as an art critic menaced by a disembodied hand) are rather excellent. Others (Alan 'Fluff' Freeman being menaced by a giant plant, Roy Castle getting mixed up in Voodoo, Donald Sutherland and the vampire) are fairly laughable. The Skull was more traditional horror, if you can call a horror film about the evil powers of the skull of the Marquis de Sade 'traditional'. They returned to the anthology with Torture Garden where Burgess Meredith runs a sinister sideshow and tells the fortune of his unfortunate customers. Only really worthwhile for the segment 'The Man Who Collected Poe'. Amicus's greatest work wouldn't come until the 1970s.

Sidney Hayers' "Circus of Horrors".

Outside of Hammer and Amicus, British horror was showing itself to be full of life. Sidney Hayers' Circus of Horrors, part of what David Pirie dubbed Anglo-Amalgamated's Sadian trilogy (along with Horrors of the Black Museum and Peeping Tom) played on the idea of plastic surgery as a source of horror, with a surgeon on the run transforming deformed women into beautiful ones for his circus's Temple of Beauties and murdering them when they try to leave his control. Horror Hotel was made in Britain but set in America, it's an interesting tale of Satanism and witchcraft in a small town with a minor but memorable role for Christopher Lee. In some ways it owes a deal to H.P. Lovecraft, but structurally it has a marked similarity to Psycho.

Vernon Sewell had a low-key but fascinating career in the 60s. He started the decade with his three best films, The Man in the Back Seat, House of Mystery and Strongroom. The Man in the Back Seat and Strongroom may not seem like horror films on first glance. The Man in the Back Seat is the tale of a robbery gone wrong as Derren Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner are forced to travel the city looking for a place to dump a slowly dying bookie. While that may seem more traditional thriller than horror, the final scenes push it firmly into the horror genre. And even without those scenes, the film's dark and pessimistic view on both human nature and the fickle nature of fate makes it into a British version of Detour, which to my mind is a perfect cross-breed of horror and film noir. Strongroom is very much a companion piece and features Nesbitt and Faulkner in very similar roles. Once again it's a tale of a robbery gone wrong and it almost feels like an alternate reality take on the leads from The Man in the Back Seat, but with the same message that no matter what you do, fate will fuck you in the end. House of Mystery is a more conventional haunted house tale, though not quite as strong as the other two, it's still a chilling little B-movie and worth the time of anyone interested in the genre.

Revisiting classic texts was still in fashion and The Tell Tale Heart was given yet another adaptation. It couldn't live up to the animated offering from the 50s and it was generally just another so-so Poe adaptation, thankfully the 60s were to bring about a series of Poe adaptations, possibly the greatest cinema has ever seen. But more on those later. Jack Clayton returned to a classic source when he adapted The Turn of the Screw as The Innocents. In the process he created one of the greatest ghost stories ever put on film. It's difficult to impress just how chilling and magnificent a film The Innocents is. Probably the most ambiguous ghost story ever filmed, it holds an impressive claim to being the greatest cinematic ghost story. It had a rival for the title that same decade with Robert Wise's adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting. Like Clayton, Wise understood that a good ghost story needed to be told with subtlety rather than spectacle. The two films had something in common with a heartbreakingly fragile performance from their lead actresses, Julie Harris and Deborah Kerr. Classic literature was also plundered for Orson Welles' adaptation of The Trial. Welles captures the insanity of Kafka's novel perfectly, and it's Anthony Perkins second great performance of the decade. Albert Zugsmith's take on Confessions of an Opium Eater wasn't the most faithful adaptation, but it was an excellent piece of psychedelic horror. Vincent Price stars as Thomas de Quincy who becomes involved in a gangster war in 19th century San Francisco. The film is tipped into the horror genre by several psychedelic drug trip sequences. Peter Brook adapted Lord of the Flies and created a rough but inspired look at the way society can break down when the rules are removed. Andy Warhol filmed an usual adaptation of A Clockwork Orange with Vinyl, in many ways it's just as essential as the Kubrick, but I could understand a lot of people being dismayed by it. Night of the Eagle's source text may not be as famous as some of the others, but it was one of the best examinations of witchcraft, superstition and belief in cinema. Don Sharp raided the Sax Rohmer back catalogue for several Fu Manchu films that starred Christopher Lee as an Asian madman. Meanwhile one of the decades other horror icons, Vincent Price, starred in The Last Man on Earth, an adaptation of I Am Legend. It may be flawed, but it's still the greatest adaptation of that classic novel. Not counting The Simpsons Halloween episode, of course.

Sci-fi horror was in a bit of a decline. The boom of the 50s had faded away, but even if it wasn't as popular as it used to be, the cross-genre still gave us classics like The Time Machine, The Day the Earth Caught Fire and Hammer's The Earth Dies Screaming. While sci-fi declined, the horror comedy continued to thrive, with a return to the old dark house/reading of a will horror-comedies. What a Carve Up! was one of the best yet. When he was outside of the Carry On films, Sid James actually seemed to make an effort, but even at his best (as he was here) he was still easily outclassed by Kenneth Connor. Speaking of Carry On, Carry On Screaming saw the team taking on Hammer, producing their finest work in the process. The crowning gem of British horror comedy of the period has to be the savage The Bed-Sitting Room, a film that reflected the fear of nuclear destruction mixed with some good old satirical humour. The Bed-Sitting Room played on the horror of the real world and a threat that could destroy us all. It became the subject of satire elsewhere in the decade, with Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove being a notable example, but some films played it straight. In Britain, we were given The War Game, a look at nuclear war that was so chilling the BBC felt compelled to ban it. In America, Frank Perry used the threat of nuclear war to play out a Lord of the Fliesstyle battle between children in a small town.

Despite the image that likes to be painted of British cinema as all Merchant Ivory/David Lean-esque films, in fact it always tended towards the eccentric and the 60s was a time when British cinema really embraced the weird. The break-down in social barriers inspired some of the films. Joseph Losey's The Servant, with a lower-class manservant taking over the new townhouse of his wealthy employer, leading to a breakdown of social roles and mental faculties. Jack Clayton's second great horror of the decade played more on the idea of family breakdown as a family of children are left to fend for themselves after their sternly religious mother dies and they don't tell anyone, afraid of what will happen if they separate. The family unit also broke down in I Start Counting, where a young Jenny Agutter's incestuous fantasies for her step-brother blind her to the possibility that he could be a murderous rapist. This sense of breakdown and the newly found fear of the young coincided with the revolutionary spirit that captured the teenage imagination in the 60s. The most obvious sign that something was wrong with the children came at the very beginning of the decade with The Village of the Damned, an adaptation of Wyndham's classic The Midwich Cuckoos. There the children really were from another planet. The worry of childhood perversion would take hold as we reached the end of the decade. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly saw a murderous pseudo family of a mother, a daughter, a son and a nanny come together to kidnap 'new friends' to keep as playthings, until mumsy and girly go to war for the sexual favours of the latest 'new friend'. In addition to The War Game, Peter Watkins also gave us Privilege. A bizarre pseudo-documentary that runs with the idea that the government have created a state-controlled rock star to help keep teenagers in check. We also had The Collector, with an insane Terence Stamp kidnapping Samantha Eggar while Twisted Nerve had Hywel Bennet pretending to be retarded to get close to Hayley Mills.

Outside of the fear of youth films, A Study in Terror was an interesting collision between Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. Seance on a Wet Afternoon was a chilling tale of a fake psychic who kidnaps a child to try and blackmail the parents. Corruption was an interesting spin on Eyes Without a Face, Peter Cushing plays a plastic surgeon forced to kill to get skin graft tissues for his newly disfigured trophy wife. Devil Doll was a neat variation on the possessed dummy idea from Dead of Night, some of the scenes with the dummy are truly disturbing. Eye of the Devil was in more traditional territory, with a woman stumbling into an unfriendly community and The Penthouse was home invasion territory, with a very nasty edge you might not expect from the director of The Italian Job.

"The She Beast", directed by 'one of the true greats of the 60s', Michael Reeves.

One of the true greats of the 60s was Michael Reeves. His debut film, She-Beast, may not be considered as one of the classics, but it showed the promise he was to fulfil over the next few years. The Sorcerers was part of the 'fear of youth' movement, but Reeves skilfully subverted the story to make the elderly who wish to be young more dangerous and terrifying than the young, along with the American Targets, it featured Boris Karloff's last great performance and an astounding one from Catherine Lacey. His most acclaimed film is Witchfinder General. Vincent Price gives his finest performance as Matthew Hopkins, the notorious historical witchfinder. The film mixes old school storylines with a modern sensibility about violence and brutality. Price's sadism here is in dark contrast to the warmer, hammier persona most people associate with him.

Roman Polanski established himself as a force to be reckoned with. Knife in the Water was more straight out thriller than horror but by his second feature (and his move to London), Repulsion, he was making full-out horror as Catherine Deneuve slowly went insane in a London flat. He continued making classics throughout the decade, such as Cul-de-Sac, horror parody The Fearless Vampire Killers and Rosemary's Baby, establishing himself as one of the most important directors in the genre. Rosemary's Baby was one of the first child of Satan films and it was one of the very best, especially in comparison to the vastly overrated Omen saga. Speaking of important directors, another major name debuted at the tail end of the decade when David Cronenberg made Stereo. His star wouldn't rise until the 70s, but Stereo was a promising start to a great career.

Roger Corman established himself as one of the names of the decade with his series of Poe adaptations. Even if his films weren't exactly faithful, he created a series of genuinely frightening and magnificent horror films. The cycle started in 1960 with The Fall of the House of Usher, a film that also established his recurring lead, Vincent Price. The following year he was back again with The Pit and the Pendulum. The Premature Burial mixed things up a little with Ray Milland taking the Price role, but it was another success anyway. Tales of Terror was the first real disappointment of the series, being merely ok rather than a masterpiece. The following year, The Raven would suffer a similar fate. But Corman would also film yet another classic, The Haunted Palace. The cycle would peak in 64 with two of the greatest films the genre has ever seen, The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia. Amazingly, Corman would also find time to direct the spoof Creature From the Haunted Sea. The Richard the Third ripoff, Tower of London. And the jawdropping tale of racism being stirred up in a small town by a slug-like William Shatner. His best non-Poe work was X - The Man with X-Ray Eyes. A film that rose beyond its pulpish beginnings to offer something quite profound. As the decade moved on, Corman would become more active as producer than director, giving a start to some of the biggest names in the industry. Vincent Price and Peter Lorre had teamed up a lot in the Corman Poe films, they'd do so again in Jacques Tourneur's The Comedy of Terrors.

William Castle continued his run of circus sideshow like cinema in the early part of the decade with 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, 13 Frightened Girls, Strait-Jacket and I Saw What You Did. Mr. Sardonicus must have been his most daring piece of cinema trickery yet. He gave viewers thumb-up and thumbs-down signs and at the end of the film asked them to vote if they wanted to see a happy or sad ending. Of course, he only filmed the one ending. H.G. Lewis brought gore to the masses in the early part of the decade with his drive-in favourites, Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red. Anyone who claims they didn't make gory films back then needs to educate themselves with these demented masterpieces. Two Thousand Maniacs! is the best of the lot, a redneck take on Brigadoon with a Southern town coming back once every 100 years to slaughter some Northern tourists. Ray Dennis Steckler, one of the worst directors of all time, gave us The Incredibly Strange Creatures and The Thrill Killers and we should be eternally thankful.

The fear of the psychotic bled into different aspects of the genre. Cape Fear saw Gregory Peck menaced by convict Robert Mitchum. Scorsese's remake would darken a lot of the film, but Mitchum was more terrifying than De Niro hamming it up. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? had a psychotic Bette Davis tormenting her wheelchair bound sister, Joan Crawford. I can only imagine Davis loved every second of it. Who Killed Teddy Bear had Sal Mineo's finest performance. The Honeymoon Killers was a true life serial killer tale powered by great performances from Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco. Fuller's Shock Corridor actually placed its horror inside an asylum, although the idea of mental illness being somehow contagious was ludicrous. Coppola made an early impression with Dementia 13, thanks to Corman. We also have Corman to thank for giving Peter Bogdanovich the chance to direct Targets, a film that bridged the gap between old school gothic horror and modern day psycho thrillers, topped off with a wonderful Boris Karloff performance.

Some deeply distressing films were released that may not seem to be horror on first glance, but both Beckett's Film and Frank Perry's The Swimmer deserve to be recognised as horrors of the soul. Also on that list belongs The World's Greatest Sinner where a spiritual battle plays out between Clarence 'God' Hilliard and, um, God. Frankenheimer's Seconds was another spiritual horror, this time about what can go wrong when you get a second chance in a new body, but keep the same soul.

"A horror of the soul", Frank Perry's "the Swimmer".

Some small indie horrors made impressions in America. In 62 there was Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls. Although at times it feels like a lost Twilight Zone episode, it's still a chilling and brilliant piece of genre cinema, with one of the most memorable nightmare figures I've ever seen. Fans of the genre will figure out the film early on, but it's still a great ride. At the end of the 60s came the Charles Addams-esque Spider Baby from Jack Hill, the sadly overlooked 'The Witchmaker' and one of the most important horror films ever made, Night of the Living Dead. It's impossible to overstate the importance to the genre of Romero's zombie film. It broke down taboos, it brought gore and independent horror films to mass attention. Like Psycho, it helped change the entire direction of the genre and any top 100 of the genre that doesn't include it is fatally flawed.

There were several memorable horror shorts made. Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker's Le Nez was great, but Svankmajer's The Flat and Trnka's The Hand was the best of the animations, but in live action there was Michael Armstrong's early David Bowie outing, The Image, Clu Gulager's A Day with the Boys, Gary Levy's Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? and Robert Enrico's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge to take the honours.

Italian horror cinema went through a rejuvenation, thanks in no small part to Mario Bava. I've thrown the word important around a lot this article, but Bava is another name that deserves it. Starting the decade with Black Sunday, still his finest work. He would create a series of masterpieces that would include Hercules in the Haunted World, anthology film Black Sabbath (A Drop of Water is one of the great anthology film entries) he would help kickstart the giallo genre with the likes of Blood and Black Lace, Kill, Baby Kill... and The Whip and the Body are masterclasses in gothic horror and Planet of the Vampires was an influence on Alien. Important indeed. Antonio Margheriti also made a bit of a name for himself with a series of gothic horrors to rival Bava's. Castle of Blood, The Virgin of Nuremberg and The Long Hair of Death may not be as well known as Black Sunday, but they deserve to be. Away from those great names Italian cinema also gave us Mill of the Stone Women, Death Laid an Egg and The Horrible Dr Hichcock, three films in desperate need of critical reevaluation.

In the rest of Europe, Paul Naschy made a name for himself in Spain with a series of not always inspired but entertaining werewolf films. Jean Rollin started his career as he planned to continue, with The Nude Vampire and The Rape of the Vampire. Spirits of the Dead brought together Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini to make an anthology film based on Poe's stories. Only Fellini really got it right, doing possibly the best work of his career. Vadim also turned his hand to vampirism with Blood and Roses. Jesus Franco made an inspired Les Yeux sans Visage ripoff with The Awful Doctor Orloff. Nothing else he made in the 60s could come close, not even The Bloody Judge with Christopher Lee. Chico Ibanez-Serrador's masterpiece wouldn't come until the 70s, but his 1969 offering, The House That Screamed was a good indication of what he was capable of. In Germany there were a series of Edgar Wallace adaptations like Dead Eyes of London and The Door with Seven Locks that kickstarted a Krimi cycle. Eastern Europe created a series of paranoid horrors, inspired by the fear of Communist rule, such as The Fifth Horseman Is Fear and The Party and the Guests. Wojciech Has had the inspired The Saragossa Manuscript. The Cremator was a horrific black comedy about the Holocaust. From Russia came Viy, a tale of witchcraft inspired by Gogol. Walerian Borowczyk became another name to be reckoned with, his work may not be easy, but it is deserves to be acclaimed as brilliant. Les jeux des anges, Theatre de Monsieur et Madame Kabal and Goto, Island of Love would be three remarkable films in the space of a career, he made them in the space of four years. Ingmar Bergman continued to flirt with the genre with The Virgin Spring, before going all out in his Freudian horror masterpiece, Hour of the Wolf.

In South America, Jose Mojica Marins rose to fame. Better known as his onscreen alter ego, the demonic Coffin Joe, Mojica Marins produced a series of films that taunted the ultra-religious Brazilian government with their blasphemy and decadence. They may be slightly obscure in comparison to some other 60s offerings but At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, The Strange World of Coffin Joe and Awakening of the Beast are all must-sees for anyone even slightly interested in the genre. Also in South America, there was Spiritism, a loose adaptation of The Monkey's Paw and Master of Horror, an anthology adaptation of Poe that remains difficult to see in full because of anti-semitism in one of the stories. El Baron del Terror was a truly insane sci-fi horror. The 60s also saw the beginning of the Santo cycle, a series of film that pitted real life masked Mexican wrestler El Santo against a series of villains from Witches to Martians to Dracula himself. A far classier production was Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, it also ranks as both one of the funniest and most disturbing films mentioned in this article. Jodorowsky also started off his cinema career with the bizarre but enthralling Fando and Lis.

Japan produced a remarkable wave of horror, starting in 1960 with Jigoku, a detailed depiction of the torments you can expect to go through if you're sent to Hell. Ishiro Honda directed more Godzilla sequels and did his best work with an adaptation of a William Hope Hodgson story, Matango: Fungus of Terror. There was a truly magnificent ghostly anthology in Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan. Kaneto Shindo produced two masterworks in the bleak Onibaba and Kuroneko. Hiroshi Teshigahara created a sensual yet disturbing classic in Woman of the Dunes. The Japanese horror director of the decade has to be Yasuzo Masumura, he explored human perversity in films like Red Angel, Manji and the most disturbing of them all, Moju. It's also worth spending some time with other Japanese offerings from the decade like two from Hajime Sato, Ghost of the Hunchback and Goke, Bodysnatcher From Hell. India offered a few items of interest as well, Raja Nawathe's Gumnaam (to achieve fame thanks to Ghost World) was an enjoyable, if overlong, adaptation of And Then There Were None while Satyajit Ray got in on anthology films with Three Daughters, with one of the segments being a ghost story.

Satyajit Ray, director of "the Three Daughters", which features a ghost story.

In literature, Robert Bloch released the astonishing Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares collection. Robert Arthur created another of my earliest influences, The Three Investigators. A series of novels where three teenage boys investigate often horror themed mysteries. Robert Aickman was one of the stars of the decade writing inspired if bewildering material like The Swords, Bind Your Hair, Ringing the Changes, The Cicerones, No Stronger Than a Flower and The Inner Room. All released in a wave of classic collections that included Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories, Powers of Darkness: Macabre Stories and Sub Rosa: Strange Tales. Basil Copper began to make a reputation for himself with Camera Obscura, The Academy of Pain and Amber Print. Theodore Sturgeon published the unique and brilliant Some of Your Blood, a truly original vampire tale. Richard Matheson published two of the greatest short story collections of all time with Shock! and Shock!

Manly Wade Wellman continued to create something special with You Know the Tale of Hoph and Who Fears the Devil? Ramsey Campbell gave us Cold Print and The Scar, paving the way for the magnificent body of work he would go on to create. Ray Bradbury wrote the classic tale of small-town terror, Something Wicked This Way Comes, a film about the fear of the other seen through the eyes of a small boy entranced by a sinister carnival. John Fowles' The Collector was a decent psycho-thriller, a case could also be made for his masterpiece, The Magus, having some roots in the genre. Charles Birkin wrote A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. The great Kingsley Amis offered up a ghost story, The Green Man. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange, sparking a thousand and one moral debates. J.G. Ballard wrote The Atrocity Exhibition, a novel that still shocks and surprises 40 years on. Jerzy Kosinki's The Painted Bird was terrifying. Other classics like Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration, John Christopher's A Wrinkle in the Skin, Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop, Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, Paul Bowles' Pages from Cold Point. Best of the lot was Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It's screaming out to be filmed, but as Pamela Franklin is no longer in her early 20s I'm not sure who could pull off Merricat Blackwood. There's a case to be made for Pynchon's V and The Crying of Lot 49 to be regarded as borderline entries, same goes for Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but those are conversations that take more space than I have here. The Owl Service was an extraordinary fantasy/horror hybrid from Alan Garner. Graham Greene's Under the Garden, Vladimir Nabokov's A Visit to the Museum and Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been are among the greatest short stories ever written in any genre. Horror collections like The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and The Pan Book of Horror Stories provided ongoing anthologies were new and old horror stories were showcased. Possibly the most notorious of the authors to appear was Alex White, an allegedly female writer who created some of the most sickening stories you could ever hope to read. Never Talk to Strangers was the most notorious, and this predated torture porn by four decades. Eli Roth is an amateur compared to White.

Horror comics made a bit of a comeback with Creepy and Eerie, the underground comix boom of the late 60s also took in more extreme material, like S. Clay Wilson's The Checkered Demon. The most disturbing work came from Edward Gorey and his look at childhood horrors of The Gashlycrumb Tinies and The Insect God. A moment should also be taken to pay tribute to the great artists at Topps, the people responsible for the jawdropping Mars Attacks trading card series.

Radio horror continued to produce classics. Beyond Midnight was a series that dealt in adapting classic tales. Its version of The Green Vase is one of the best radio horror stories ever recorded. On British radio, The Slide was a sci-fi/horror hybrid I'd dearly love to have seen filmed. Events at Black Tor may not have the strongest genre credentials, it was written by Roy Clarke of Last of the Summer Wine fame, but it's a surprisingly scary tale of a young cop investigating Satanic sacrifice on the Yorkshire moors. Luckily the hero is saved from being sacrificed when at the last minute the Satanists are distracted by three old men travelling down the road in a bathtub. While on the audio theme I have to take time to give a quick nod to Bobby 'Boris' Pickett, creator of the legendary Monster Mash.

On television, the 60s was the decade of the anthology series. The Twilight Zone is the obvious figurehead, even though it started in 1959, most of the classics were produced in the 60s and that was when it really become such an iconic production. Even though The Twilight Zone was the most famous anthology series, it was just one of many. There was also The Outer Limits, which is generally considered a more sci-fi orientated companion series to The Twilight Zone. Boris Karloff hosted Thriller, a mixed bag of a series that sometimes produced stone cold classics, like the adaptation of Pigeons from Hell. In Spain there was Historias para no dormir. In Britain there was Out of the Unknown, a series that mostly dealt in sci-fi but also produced controversy courting horror episodes like To Lay a Ghost. Hammer took to the small screen with memorable results in Journey to the Unknown. Mystery and Imagination produced classy adaptations of famous novels and stories, including the oddly inspired casting of Denholm Elliott as Dracula. The decade's anthology horrors were bookended by Rod Serling. He started the 60s with The Twilight Zone and ended it with Night Gallery. At times Night Gallery was just silly, but at its best, such as its adaptation of Pickman's Model, it reached the same dizzying heights as The Twilight Zone.

In other television, America gave the world sillier shows. The Addams Family was a fun adaptation of Charles Addams cartoons, Dark Shadows started life as a soap opera but it turned one of its leads into a vampire, and we've already discussed the impact Scooby Doo had on my life. British television took a more pessimistic view of life. The Avengers was a lighter telefantasy offering, but for the most part even its children's shows like The Owl Service and Dr. Who had a darker outlook on life. Nigel Kneale wrote the fascinating and prescient The Year of the Sex Olympics. The Prisoner took on the horror of life as conformity and created one of the great, thought-provoking, anti-establishment television series in the process. Best of the lot was Whistle and I'll Come to You, Jonathan Miller's adaptation of the M.R. James tale, complete with an award-worthy lead performance from the great Michael Hordern.

So that was the 60s, a time where cultural taboos were broken down but the genre still retained a healthy respect for the past. But just around the corner was the 70s, possibly the greatest decade for world horror and a time where bleakness and pessimism infected so much of the genre.